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Dr. Troubleshoot
Not to be confused with the character of the same name. Dr. Troubleshoot is a short film directed and produced by Scott Pincus and written and edited by Scott and Ryan Bowman. The film was the first and only video project for Scott's TV Studio class, in which he had to create a video featuring various different camera angles, similarly to the Creepy Guy in the Woods Film Series. The movie is notorious for having been dislike-botted on YouTube, along with all its trailers. The film follows serial killer and arsonist Dr. Murphy Cates, otherwise known as Dr. Troubleshoot, a member of a secret criminal organization who failed on his previous mission and now faces a multitude of new diverse threats. Ryan Bowman stars as Dr. Troubleshoot, with Gabe Sagherian, Austin Brinser, Jacob Doerr, Zion Figueroa, Dakota Markle and Chris Lombardo rounding out the rest of the cast. Filming took place on May 9, after various delays, and the project was released on May 24, 2015. A sequel for the film was left as a possibility for some time, though confidence in the project was low due to the first film's faults. The sequel was scrapped following Ryan Bowman's expulsion from Scott's projects in February 2017. Plot Serial killer and arsonist Dr. Murphy Cates, also known as "Dr. Troubleshoot", walks through the woods, stopping at a split trail to rendesvous with two members of a secret criminal organization, Bitly and Joe, who are set to give him his next assignment. They confirm that Cates failed on his previous mission, and that they're there to kill him as a result. Cates runs off as they shoot at him and go in pursuit. In the meantime, three young police officers, Tim Simmons, Ford Georgeman and Randy Hopkins arrive at Cates' location, and a gunfight breaks out. Randy is shot by Joe, while Cates escapes and the hitmen follow him. In the meantime, Detective Roland Thompson arrives with his own team, having received a distress call during the gunfight. The united team heads further into the walking trail, intervening as the hitmen are about to kill Cates near the top of a hill. A second, larger gunfight breaks out, with the cops firing at the hitmen and Cates shooting at both sides. Eventually, Cates sees an opportunity to escape, and retreats from the scene. The hitmen are caught up in the gunfight and can't escape; Roland shoots Joe, and Simmons shoots Bitly. Following the gunfight, Simmons explains to Roland how he and Ford came here to find Cates, and they won't leave until they do so. Roland offers to help find Cates; Simmons disagrees at first, but eventually accepts his help. Ford and the other officers watch as Simmons and Roland run off deeper into the walking trail. Characters *Ryan Bowman as Dr. Troubleshoot/Murphy Cates - A serial killer and arsonist who is a member of a secret criminal organization. After failing on his previous mission, he becomes faced with various "new obstacles", including the likes of a group of young police officers bent on detaining him. *Gabe Sagherian as Tim Simmons - A young police officer who leads two of his fellow colleagues on a search for Dr. Cates. Tim's firm belief in the existence of a criminal like Cates led to him requesting permission to go off on a mission to apprehend him, despite many people thinking that Cates either escaped the state or cannot be found at all. He is eighteen years old. *Austin Brinser as Ford Georgeman - A young police officer who goes with Tim and Randy to hunt down and apprehend Cates. While often quiet, Ford is always trustworthy and determined to fulfill any task at hand. He is eighteen years old. *Jacob Doerr as Randy Hopkins - A young police officer who goes with Tim and Ford to hunt down and capture Cates. Randy tends to dress formally, no matter what the occasion, even if his missions involve venturing onto new grounds. He is nineteen years old, and acts as an influence on his fellow officers, including Tim and Ford, who he teams up with to apprehend Cates. *Ryan Bowman as Roland Thompson - A young police officer who aspires to join the U.S. military in the near future. Roland is twenty-one years old, and commonly leads younger police officers on training missions or even dangerous operations. *Chris Lombardo as De Gaule - A young police officer who is a member of Roland Thompson's team. He is eighteen years old and a longtime partner and friend of Roland. *Zion Figueroa as Bitly Pennell - A hitman dispatched to kill Dr. Troubleshoot after he left traces of his existence in his previous mission. Smart and agile, Bitly was chosen for the job for a reason. *Dakota Markle as Joe Batterton - A hitman dispatched to kill Dr. Troubleshoot after he left traces of his existence in his previous mission. Joe is strong and acts as Bitly's partner in their mission to kill Cates. Production Original Concepts On October 31, 2014, Scott, Ryan Bowman, Gabe Sagherian and Russell Parkinson got together to celebrate Halloween and also to plan a project for Ryan Bowman's German class. That night, Scott developed the idea to make a film titled "Dr. Troubleshoot", that would be centered around a villainous character of the same name. Russell, Gabe and Ryan agreed with the idea, and it was put into action the following day. Ryan decided that he wanted to film the movie to be a trailer, which would be what his German project was based around. On November 1, 2014, the group shot the beginning of the movie, which was mainly improvised, until deciding not to complete the movie and to instead use the footage they had to create a trailer for the film. The trailer was released on November 3, 2014, by Ryan B on a separate channel. Unfortunately, the trailer gained little attention, and furthermore, the trailer was not shown to Ryan's class, as he decided to go elsewhere with the project and make something entirely different. Initially, he was planning just to show the trailer to the class for fun, but he turned down this idea. Project Revival In April 2015, Scott's TV Studio teacher assigned the class a project: to create a video featuring various different shot types. Seeing an opportunity to create something new, Scott began thinking of ideas alongside Ryan Bowman. After days of thinking without any provoking ideas, Scott finally thought of doing a reboot of Dr. Troubleshoot. Ryan supported the idea, and the film went into production. By the end of the month, Scott and Ryan had developed a story for the film, with Scott submitting a storyboard for it as well. Filming was set to take place on either May 2 or May 3, but since several people wouldn't be able to come, filming was postponed to May 9. On May 8, 2015, Scott confirmed that the film will star Ryan Bowman, Gabe Sagherian, Sean Larkin, Zion Figueroa, Chris Lombardo and Dakota Markle, with Ryan and Gabe portraying characters from the film's "concept trailer". Russell P was initially set to play Ford Georgeman, as he did in the original film, but unfortunately he was not able to film on May 9. On May 9, Sean Larkin stated that he could not attend filming. As a result, Austin Brinser was cast in the role of Ford Georgeman. The film was shot and completed on May 9. The trailer was released on May 10. Dislikes Incident On May 13, a very strange event occured with the film on YouTube. The film's minute long trailer began to steadily climb in views, but it also skyrocketed in dislikes. By the end of the day, the trailer had around seventy views, two likes and sixteen dislikes. By the following day, the trailer had risen 200 views overnight and gained over 200 dislikes. Scott realized that the strange event was the work of a dislike bot, which is designed to dislike a YouTube video many times without creating multiple new accounts. Scott re-released the film's trailer, with several modifications, on May 15. The trailer was once more dislike-botted, with 8 likes and 63 dislikes. The trailer was re-uploaded a third and final time on May 16, to which it has currently gained 8 likes and 48 dislikes. The previous day, one of JTH Studios' new videos was also "dislike-botted", at which point Scott began to expect that the massive amount of dislikes was actually coming out of a glitch on YouTube. As a result of the massive amount of dislikes, as well as Ryan B's ongoing editing of the film and the first vandalism attack on LordStarscream100 Wiki, the film was postponed a week later to May 22. Release and Reception Ryan finished editing the film on May 22. Scott spent that day making various changes to the final product, pushing the release date up a day further to May 23. However, the film had problems with uploading to YouTube, and despite the final version being successfully completed and uploaded late at night, Scott chose to wait until the next day to make the film public. The film was officially released on May 24. Despite receiving over 100 dislikes, due to the work of a dislike bot, the film "technically" received a positive reception, gaining a total of nine likes. However, a final reception may never be known, due to the fact that Scott cannot tell apart the dislikes caused by the dislike bot, or the actual dislikes from people who didn't enjoy the film. Cancelled Sequel Plans were made over the next two years to create a sequel, but the project constantly had difficulty with getting off the ground. There were plans to make a sequel sometime in the first half of 2017, before the cast graduated high school. Little details on the sequel were disclosed, though any and all information can be found here and here. Following Ryan Bowman's expulsion in February 2017, the project was ultimately scrapped. The same happened with the proposed sequel to Isarus, as Ryan was set to play the main antagonist of both films. Trivia *This is the first LordStarscream100 film where Ryan Bowman plays the villain. *The film marked the acting debuts of Dakota Markle and Zion Figueroa. Initially, Jurassic Shark III: The Revolution was going to be Dakota Markle's acting debut, as well as Zion's before he was temporarily dropped from the cast, but this was changed at the last minute when they were cast in this film. *This was one of Scott's few short films (outside of The Creepy Guy in the Woods series) that received a trailer prior to its release. It was later followed by Isarus and No More Smiling. Scott usually releases short films without posting a trailer to keep them a surprise. *This is Scott's first short film outside of the Bread's Crumbs and EdTech Enterprise series that he didn't appear in (although he didn't appear in two of the Bread's Crumbs interquels, nor did he appear in An Aspiration to Excel). Category:Short Films Category:2015 Storyline Category:Dr. Troubleshoot Category:Films Category:Standalone Films Category:School Projects